Public education provision,private schooling and income redistribution

Availability of free public education induces a transfer in kind among households with school age children. We provide evidence of the redistributive character of public education provision. We estimate structural quantile treatment effects of household income on the distribution of expected educational transfers in kind. Under the assumption that education quality is a normal good, better services (ancillary to the core education mission) supplied by private schools increase quality therein and reduce the incentives for wealthy households to enroll in public education. Because of these incentives, rich families benefit less from educational transfers in kind and the public education system is redistributive. Using household survey data from Italy, we find that an increase in net income reduces the value of the expected educational in kind transfers for compulsory education.     

Target Specificity of Subjective Relationship Measures: Understanding the Determination of Item Variance

The present study was conducted to test the ability of two subscales from the Friendship Quality Questionnaire (FQQ; Parker & Asher, 1993 ) to discriminate between different target friendships. This was done by testing for mean differences between targets, and by using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to examine the factor structures for these measures when the responses for different targets were considered together. Participants were 293 Italian middle‐school students. Both subscales (Validation and Caring, and Conflict and Betrayal) showed mean differences between the best friend and the second and third best friends, but only the validation and caring subscale demonstrated differences between the second and third best friends. Factor analyses showed that for both subscales some items were able to discriminate between friends whereas others were not. Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated the existence of target‐specific factors, as well as a common ‘individual differences’ factor. Practical and theoretical issues regarding the different sources of item variance are discussed.     

Changing the method of working with homeless people: a photovoice project in Italy

In Italy, many organizations are experimenting with the Housing First (HF) model to promote a change in how they work with homeless people. This change creates some difficulties, especially in promoting freedom of choice in people involved in the HF programs. This study explored the definition of “home” in homeless people’s points of view. The study participants were 5 homeless men involved in a HF program called “The Road Home” implemented in the city of Padua. Data were collected using Photovoice, a photographic method based on participatory action research. During the project, the participants took photographs to illustrate their definitions of “home” and then engaged in a critical dialogue about the images represented in the photographs. The results of the study showed that occupants identified the home as being related to family, friendship, cohabitation, and hope for the future. The Photovoice project provided an opportunity to promote discussions that revealed the true needs of the people involved, and in the meantime, it brought a change to the program and to the community, in addition to promoting the HF model in the community.     

Effects of data breaches from user-generated content: A corporate reputation analysis

A threat for a growing number of firms in various industries is the occurrence of different breaches of sensitive corporate data. These critical events represent vulnerability for firms' corporate reputations, whose multiple dimensions are affected by customers negative perceptions in various ways. Further, in the Industry 4.0 era, the redundancy of scandals on social media can exacerbate negative effects. This paper reports an investigation into the effects of data breaches on corporate reputation dimensions. In this context, the study conducted latent Dirichlet allocation analysis on social media user-generated content (UGC) for a sample of 35 firms in nine industries that suffered a data breach incident between 2013 and 2016. Incidents have been categorized into three categories: “intentional and internal,” “unintentional and internal,” and “intentional and external” data breaches. The aim of the study was to discover how reputational dimensions changed after these critical events and to identify the differences among the types of data breaches.Results reveal that after critical events, more reputational dimensions appear to be relevant. While before critical events, users typically discuss the “perceived quality” of a firm's offer, after all three types of data breaches, users also pay attention to “customer orientation” and “corporate performance” dimensions. Another key reputation dimension, especially after intentional and internal data breaches, is the “firm as employer,” particularly in the context of a lack of investment in training regarding these events.These findings provide key insights for academics and practitioners to understand large-scale data breaches effects and reputational drawbacks after such incidents.     

Deaths at the borders database: evidence of deceased migrants’ bodies found along the southern external borders of the European Union

Irregular migrants and asylum seekers have died and continue to die attempting to cross the external borders of the EU without authorisation, seeking to enter the territories of its Member States. Yet, remarkably little is known about these ‘border deaths’. In 2015, the Human Costs of Border Control project published the Deaths at the Borders Database for the Southern EU, an open-source ‘evidence base’ of individualised information about people who have died border deaths between 1990 and 2013, sourced from the death management systems of Spain, Gibraltar, Italy, Malta and Greece. It is the first database on border deaths in the EU to be based on official sources as opposed to the news media. The project involved searching 563 state-run death registry archives and deductively selecting the death certificates of persons who died border deaths. This paper describes, in detail, the making of the Deaths at the Borders Database: from the systematic, multi-sited, quantitative data collection and qualitative case studies, to the construction and final results of the Database itself.     

Central hypogonadism due to a giant, “silent” FSH-secreting,atypical pituitary adenoma: effects of adenoma dissection and short-term Leydig cell stimulation by luteinizing hormone (LH) and human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG)

We present a case report of an atypical giant pituitary adenoma secreting follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH). A 55-year-old patient presented for erectile dysfunction, loss of libido and fatigue. The biochemical evaluation showed very high FSH serum levels in the presence of central hypogonadism. Neither testicular enlargement nor increased sperm count was observed, thus a secretion of FSH with reduced biological activity was supposed. The histological examination after neuro-surgery showed an atypical pituitary adenoma with FSH-positive cells. Hypogonadism persisted and semen analyses impaired until azoospermia in conjunction with the reduction in FSH levels suggesting that, at least in part, this gonadotropin should be biologically active. Thus, we hypothesized a concomitant primary testicular insufficiency. The patient underwent short-term treatment trials with low doses of either recombinant luteinizing hormone (LH) or human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) in three consecutive treatment schemes, showing an equal efficacy in stimulating testosterone (T) increase. This is the first case of atypical, giant FSH-secreting pituitary adenoma with high FSH serum levels without signs of testicular hyperstimulation, in presence of hypogonadism with plausible combined primary and secondary etiology. Hypophysectomized patients may represent a good model to assess both pharmacodynamics and effective dose of LH and hCG in the male.     

Exploring Networking of Third Sector Organizations: A Case Study Based on the Quartieri Spagnoli Neighborhood in Naples (Italy)

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - In the last decades, European Third Sector Organizations have been increasingly affected by marketization and the...     

Archimedean copulae for risk measurement

In this paper some Archimedean copula functions for bivariate financial returns are studied. The choice of this family is due to their ability to capture the tail dependence, which is an association measure we can detect in many bivariate financial time-series. A time-varying version of these copulae is also investigated. Finally, the Value-at-Risk is computed and its performance is compared across different copula specifications.     

Use of augmented reality in the usability evaluation of products

Many characteristics of a product are evaluated during the development phase, such as function, aesthetics and manufacturing. The conception phase is supported by drawings and computer graphics, followed by physical prototypes that help evaluating the product features. The augmented reality technology has a great potential to assist the designers in this phase, reducing the development process time and costs and improving the quality of the evaluation. This paper presents a study that intends to investigate the suitability of using augmented reality to evaluate the usability of electronic products.     

Hierarchical disjoint principal component analysis

AStA Advances in Statistical Analysis - Dimension reduction, by means of Principal Component Analysis (PCA), is often employed to obtain a reduced set of components preserving the largest possible...